https://www.cbc.ca/news/world/india-pakistan-kashmir-border-clashes-1.5249291
Protests break out in India-administered Kashmir after prayer services
UN Security Council meeting over situation in Kashmir as dissent materializes after days of lockdown
Hundreds of people have held a street protest in Indian-administered Kashmir as India's government assured the Supreme Court that the situation in the disputed region is being reviewed daily and unprecedented security restrictions will be removed over the next few days.
Carrying green Islamic flags and placards reading "Stop Genocide in Kashmir, Wake Up World," young and old people took to the streets in Srinagar, the region's main city, after Friday prayers.
Some hurled stones and clashed with security forces, who responded with tear gas.
Security forces were deployed outside mosques across Srinagar, while police vans fitted with speakers asked people not to venture out, according to two Reuters witnesses.
In some parts of the city, posters appeared calling for protests and asking preachers in mosques to talk about the current situation in Kashmir valley.
"People must try to occupy the streets defying curfew," one poster read.
Earlier Friday, a senior Indian official in Kashmir, B.V.R. Subrahmanyam, confirmed there would be some loosening of restrictions on the region's residents, saying that landline phone services would be restored gradually beginning Friday night and schools reopened from Monday.
Telephone and internet links were cut and public assembly banned in Kashmir just before New Delhi removed the decades-old autonomy the Muslim majority territory enjoyed under the Indian constitution. The measures were aimed at preventing protests.
"You will find a lot of Srinagar functioning tomorrow morning," Jammu and Kashmir Chief Secretary B.V.R. Subrahmanyam told reporters.
Tensions have increased between India and Pakistan since New Delhi downgraded the autonomy of Muslim-majority Kashmir last week. India also deployed thousands of additional troops to the region and imposed the unprecedented lockdown, now in place for a 12th day.
The Supreme Court decided to give the government more time before ruling on a petition demanding the lifting of media restrictions following its assurances that they will be eased soon, attorney Vrinda Grover told reporters. She represents Kashmir Times editor Anuradha Bhasin, who said she was unable to publish her newspaper in Srinagar.
Pakistan mourns soldier
In New York, the United Nations Security Council was meeting behind closed doors to discuss the situation in Kashmir for the first time in decades at the request of China and Pakistan.
The council was being briefed Friday morning by assistant secretary general Oscar Fernandez-Taranco and Gen. Carlos Humberto Loitey, the UN military adviser.
UN officials said the council session may was the first on Kashmir since at least the late 1990s.
Russia's deputy UN ambassador, Dmitry Polyansky, told reporters as he headed into the meeting that Moscow is concerned about the latest developments, but he said it is "a bilateral issue."
Amnesty International secretary general Kumi Naidoo said in a statement that council members "need to remember that their mandate is to protect international peace and security — and they should seek to resolve the situation in a way that puts the human rights of the people in this troubled region at its centre."
Pakistan's military, meanwhile, said Indian troops fired across the line of control in the disputed Kashmir region, killing another soldier and bringing the death toll to six in less than 24 hours.
Maj.-Gen. Asif Ghafoor, an army spokesperson, said in a tweet Friday that "another brave son of soil lost his life in the line of duty" in Buttal town.
Heated words from Khan
Prime Minister Narendra Modi's government has said the revocation of Kashmir's special status was necessary to ensure its full integration into India and speed up development.
India has battled a 30-year revolt in Jammu and Kashmir in which at least 50,000 people have been killed. Critics say the decision to revoke the region's autonomy will cause further alienation and fuel the armed resistance.
Pakistan Prime Minister Imran Khan condemned the continued clampdown in India-administered Kashmir and warned Modi on Friday that "no nation can be defeated militarily when it rises for independence."
Khan in a tweet described Modi as a "fascist, Hindu supremacist." He equated Modi with Adolf Hitler and said he feared "genocide of Muslims in Kashmir."
Subrahmanyam said 12 of 22 districts in Jammu and Kashmir are functioning normally, with nighttime restrictions in five districts.
In the Kashmir valley, Subrahmanyam said schools would open after the weekend, and restrictions on movement would be lifted after a review of each area.
"It is expected that over the next few days, as the restrictions get eased, life in Jammu and Kashmir will become completely normal," he said.
Hundreds of political leaders and activists remain in detention, some of them in prisons outside Jammu and Kashmir.
At least 52 politicians, most of them belonging to the National Conference and Peoples Democratic Party regional parties, are being held at a hotel on the banks of Srinagar's Dal lake.
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